California law may exempt game programmers from receiving overtime pay [update]

Do you work in California? Do you program games? Do you make over $75K a year? Well, it may be time to seek employment in another state, friend. As of today,California Assembly Bill 10has gone into effect and means the future of game development in California for some may be marred by brutal crunch times with no compensation for overtime hours.

Amending the existing overtime laws and clarifying exemptions barring certain employees from receiving overtime under various conditions, AB 10 seeks to lower the number of lawsuits taking place in the state under previous guidelines. Joystiq's Law of the Game author Mark Methenitis explained the downside of the amendment to us this afternoon, saying, "Practically speaking, that means if you're a dev with a salary of $75K, you can't claim overtime during crunch, which means the developer is more likely to use crunch cycles."

[Update: Please pardon the confusion, dear readers. To clarify: California Assembly Bill 10, did, in fact, go into effect during October 2008. We have not -- as some emails have suggested -- become trapped in a time warp, perpetually repeating the day every store in town was inexplicably out of napkins and dill pickles.]